I used to watch more but I struggle to find the time

TMR Game 2011: Week 1

Hello, and welcome to the 2011 TMR Game!

Intro

For those new to the game, welcome. All you need do is pick a selection of up to 10 names per week, the twist being you can’t pick more than 7 from a single championship. This is my way of helping you learn of championships you might not normally follow.🙂

If playing this way doesn’t grab you, how about a challenge? If your usual series is F1, or IndyCar, or whatever – spend the year picking only drivers who race in your series currently, or have done at some stage in the past! You might be surprised at how competitive you may be.

For the returnees, welcome back! There are a few changes to the rules based on what was learned last year, details below. Alternatively if you want to be spared the details, jump down to the bottom of the page for instructions for this week’s race.

The game runs from the Daytona 24 Hours to the last major race of the year, usually that is NASCAR Cup at Homestead but this year it looks like it will be the Formula 1 Brazilian GP. If you are unable to play each week don’t worry, this year we’ve collectively thought of a way around that.

The winner of the game may declare: “I Watch Too Much Racing!”(The real aim of the game is for players to learn about a wide variety of series.)

Read more about this year’s rules and simple instructions on how to enter the game.

Rules Changes

There are new rules for 2011.

– New entrants: For the first 8 weeks, if you join late, you will get 80% of the lowest amount scored for each prior week. After 8 weeks new players still get those 8 weeks worth but no more.

– Last season there was a ‘carryover’ rule, if you missed a week your picks rolled over from the previous week. This was based on ARFL where it works well, unfortunately here it caused people to fall a long way behind the leaders. For this season, players who miss a week will be awarded 80% of the lowest score from someone who did enter a full pick, just as with new players above.
I’d like to propose that if you forget to enter 10 drivers and only choose 9, and can’t be contacted to correct it, you get the higher figure between your own score and the 80% score.

– For all sportscar races – ALMS/LMS/Daytona – you will now pick the car not a specific driver. For Sebring you might choose the McNish, Kristensen and Capello car as a single pick. The effect of this is to reduce the maximum score for a win to 50 points not 150 points, bringing sportscar races into line with the rest of the events in the game.
(However, it would be nice to denote a 24 Hour race. I am thinking of a 25% bonus awarded on positions at 12 Hours, something similar to the Spa 24 Hours points system, so the leader would get 50 x 25% = 13pts (rounded up), and then the usual 50 if they win the race. Your thoughts?)

– WRC has reluctantly been dropped. The Friday starts (sometimes Thursday) were a pain with regards to player entries (they could check form and learn of early DNFs), retirees often scored zero because junior classes filled the rest of the top 43 unlike other series where a bad week could still see players pick up 10 points for that driver. This is more about keeping parity with other series in the game.However, I say ‘reluctantly’ because with the expected increased competition this season I could be persuaded to keep it should enough people plead for it before the first round! Maybe we lose DTM instead. We have until Feb 6th to decide.

– MotoGP has been picked to replace WRC. It may be another ‘road/circuit racing’ discipline unlike the oval or loose-surface series, but I think being on two wheels makes it different enough. Anyway, who can ignore Rossi on a Ducati versus Lorenzo on a Yamaha versus Stoner on a Honda? This year will be epic.

– I haven’t properly written up the new rules yet because I’ve been too busy! A revision will appear Wednesday night and will be noted in the comments section of this post. I had hoped to release them minutes before this post but I ran out of time (it is now 1.30am), you need time to get entries in and I need time to tell people it is open again.

I am considering an opt-in mailing-list you can subscribe to in order to receive email reminders. I am not keen on harvesting addresses from player’s comments, they could be the wrong addresses or not provided for a reason.

I’d like to thank everyone who contributed feedback at the end of last season, it was very helpful!

Entries

This post accepts entries for these events:

Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona

Please select SEVEN CARS (not drivers) from this event. The entry list is here and it is really quite impressive, featuring Montoya, Franchitti, Wilson, Briscoe, Enge, Brundle (Snr), Bergmeister, Long, Minassian, Hunter-Reay, Westbrook, Maassen all in the DP class – and many more in GT. Is it worth a flier on a GT car to score a top ten overall?

Free practice and qualifying are on Thursday.

The closing point is Saturday at 6am GMT (1am US EST).

I’m well aware I’m breaking my own rule of closing entries after qualifying, but this post is two days late and this is a 24 Hour race, where qualifying is largely symbolic anyway!

27 thoughts on “TMR Game 2011: Week 1”

Ooh awesome, I’ve been longing for the games return and it starts off with something new for me too. I’ll have to do a little root round to get familiar with the event before I make my picks. *does little yay at games return*

Pat,
Great job on the rules changes. I never did get around to leaving my thoughts but you managed almost a 100% hit rate on what I was thinking. How did you manage that, anyway? Are we secretly cross-oceanic twin brothers in racing or something?

OK, now to picks (and I love the switch to car number instead of driver):

Jackie: Glad you’re back, I think you’ll well this year. Mav playing? You
may want to check your URL link, by the way.
Gavin: I’m so pleased firstly that you’re playing, and secondly that somebody accepted the challenge!
Andy: We do seem to agree on a heck of a lot of things! Pleased you like the changes, I don’t want to stray from the ARFL ethos, I’m relying on you to tell me if I do..
James: Hopefully the 80% rule will help if you get busy again, and I should do a better job of reminding everyone too. And good point, DPs aren’t the most reliable..

May I suggest if someone picks nine drivers, we do a roll-over substitution of the first relevent driver we find going back through recent selections?

I have to disagree about harvesting e-mail addresses from people’s comments and using them for reminders. Firstly, players should bear in mind providing a valid address would be useful. Secondly, the practice of e-mailing anyone who had yet to enter on Friday afternoon/evening as done later last season was very successful indeed at maintaining regular attendance. Surely it worked well enough to continue? It might be polite, as I did the e-mailing, to mention that the relevent e-mail addresses were passed to me as needed. Obviously, if I can persuade you to continue that system, if anyone became fed up of reminders turning up, a short reply message asking me to desist would be heeded. I was happy to do the reminders (although can not guarantee them, if my computer breaks or my internet crashes or I just plumb forget, but I was pretty reliable), but felt uncomfortable about it if I could not do everyone that had yet to enter. A couple of times I reminded players who had entered minutes earlier, but that will happen.

I am not in favour of points for half-distance as suggested.

Yes, DTM is very much the usual suspects race-after-race. It would be a dull competition if all the series were like that but I think the contrast between a series that is like that and other series that are a bit less to much less predictable is part of the charm and skill of the game. Gauging how predictable driver results are between events is a key part of the selection process.

I will miss the WRC but understand the reasons for losing it.

If we have two consecutive NASCAR-only weeks, might we not allow full carry-overs like last season for that circumstance?

I will not wish everyone good luck, I will wish everyone (including myself) average luck – that would be fairest.

Andy, you’ve got car #44 which is a GT entry, did you mean #45 Flying Lizards or was it intentional? I assume #66 was intentional because it is TRG and they’re a good shout for GT class.

Sebastian, that is a huge guide, cheers.🙂 The rollover idea is very credible too, I thought about it and was 50-50 on it, could very well adopt it actually. I was thinking about emails again earlier, I now plan to say in the next post (and all subsequent ones) that email addresses left in the comments may be used for reminder purposes and to send us another if preferred, and to reply if you don’t want them. Ideally as the person running the game it should be me sending them but that won’t always be possible, so it would be great if you could act as backup, and preferably Thursdays as we discussed late last year.
On NASCAR, I’d prefer to be able to tell people in advance there are two NASCAR-only weeks and allow them to make a note in their entry that it is to apply to both weeks unless they later tell me otherwise (it’ll be up to me to remember to note this in the blog post). It is a good thought but I want each week to apply the same rules for consistency. Comments noted on the points and the DTM.

Here is my pick:
01
02
45
10
6
8
95 – didn’t run in qualifying, but it has Westbrook, Hunter-Reay and Matos on board and has the benefit of Daytona’s interesting starting method, whereby classes start together rather than lining up the whole field by time.

I didn’t go for a GT, too many to choose from and all the above DPs have a good chance of finishing – I don’t want to pick the wrong one!

Thanks for writing your introduction to the game Sebastian, lots of very useful information there… especially the bit about picking favourites/wild cards and hoping they do well (err, DC every time!).

I also found it very useful to check Sebastian’s game scores, they’re displayed in a slightly different form to Pat’s and I particulary like the summary table of who picked what as it helped me appreciate just how the scores were acrued.

As one who forgot to enter several times at the beginning of the last game I appreciate the new rules, it means keeping everyone in contention. What was fun though was the mini battles that went on throughout the year between people not looking to lead the series, the one I had with Jay towards the end of the year was brilliant fun and I hope we both spurned each other on to make better choices.

One final point, as one who has forgotten to enter in the past, the email reminders were brilliant. Thanks to Pat and Sebastian for doing such a sterling job.

Cheers, Jackie. I think I am going to find this a much harder year without the sports-car multi-picks and WRC (although I am not objecting to either decision), which together with an outrageous spell of luck added up to much more than my lead. It should be closer all round. I think this week we are all groping in the dark with a race that will break many of the DP-cars and mix up the GT order as well.

Pat,
The selection of the #44 on my entry was deliberate. The Magnus Porsche was kind of below the radar all last season, and I think that driver lineup is certainly capable of a top-15 overall, or maybe even a top-10. I have my doubts as to whether or not the Flying Lizard car can go the distance… Thanks for the heads up, though, and sorry I didn’t see your reply or Tweet until just now.